Case Study (Human Rights) - LAW00087H

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Module summary

This module provides students with an opportunity to apply and develop further their problem-based learning skills in the context of a complex case study that focuses on the challenges of addressinghuman rights violations and remedies. Students will work through the scenario in student law firms carrying out a deep analysis of a range of legal, practical and ethical issues, and agreeing learning outcomes such as to develop their required knowledge across a number of areas of law that arise in these areas, which may include national and international human rights law, and related areas (eg, public law). From their final analysis, students will individually choose to work in more depth on two different outputs - developing writing and presentation skills for different audiences - examining issues of their choice arising from the case study. Students will also be able to choose the perspectives, e.g., practice-focused, academic, international/comparative, socio-legal, from which they address their selected issues. Students will receive feedback from their tutor and peers on their choices of issues, outputs and perspectives, and also on their outputs as they develop them.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 1 2026-27

Module aims

This module provides students with an opportunity to apply and develop further their problem-based learning skills in the context of a complex case study that focuses on the challenges of addressinghuman rights violations and remedies. Students will work through the scenario in student law firms carrying out a deep analysis of a range of legal, practical and ethical issues, and agreeing learning outcomes such as to develop their required knowledge across a number of areas of law that arise in these areas, which may include national and international human rights law, and related areas (eg, public law). From their final analysis, students will individually choose to work in more depth on two different outputs - developing writing and presentation skills for different audiences - examining issues of their choice arising from the case study. Students will also be able to choose the perspectives, e.g., practice-focused, academic, international/comparative, socio-legal, from which they address their selected issues. Students will receive feedback from their tutor and peers on their choices of issues, outputs and perspectives, and also on their outputs as they develop them.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

Analyse a complex human rights scenario

Identify a range of legal, practical and ethical issues arising

Explain a range of substantive and procedural legal and ethical concepts applicable to those issues

Prepare a detailed, critical, legal and practical analysis

Evaluate legal and practical issues from a number of chosen perspectives

Write a number of varied pieces of work informed by detailed research

Present a draft of a piece of work to a conference of peers

Review peers' developing work and provide feedback, whilst receiving and acting on feedback on their own work

Edit, improve and prepare finalised versions of pieces of written work

Module content

This module develops from core PBL learning the complexity, number of issues and types of legal and other issues within case studies, to facilitate development of higher level knowledge and a range of higher-level intellectual skills, both academic and practice-focused. Within these scenarios, students will have the scope to define their own written assessment outputs, aligned to the assessment requirements and module aims and learning outcomes. Through these outputs, students will be able to demonstrate interconnected knowledge, skills, attitudes, objectivity and understanding, in a high quality, compact body of work. The latter could include any of:

• Essay for academic audience
• Op-ed piece for media outlet
• Article for professional journal
• Research memo for counsel
• Research memo for a UN or regional human rights body
• Presentation for client, community group or media professionals
• Panel debate for public audience
• Case comment
• Legislation and procedural rules analysis
• Briefing for MPs and Peers
• The legal issues developed through the case study will include aspects of many of the following:
• Human rights law (nationally, regionally and internationally), including rights related to the defence of human rights
• Nationality, immigration and asylum law
• Labour and workplace law
• Criminal procedure
• Civil procedure
• Public law, including administrative procedure
• Human rights law, including freedom of speech
• Constitutional law and the rule of law

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	30.0
Essay/coursework	70.0

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

Formative work is embedded through the preparation of the assessed items as noted above. Formative feedback from tutors and peers then informs students in reviewing, editing and preparing final versions for summative assessment.

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	30.0
Essay/coursework	70.0

Module feedback

Students will receive feedback on development of their case study analysis from their tutor and peers during workshops in weeks 2, 3 and 4 of the module. They will then receive feedback on their written body of work - to form their final assessed portfolio - through a series of interactions with peers and tutors.

Feedback will be provided within the Policy Turnaround Time.

Indicative reading

Given the problem-based learning nature of this module, the focus on research skills, and the flexibility in choice of issues and perspectives on which students can prepare their written body of work, there are no key texts for this module.